Netflix Earnings Out, Company Announces 44 Million Members

Netflix has just released its earnings report for the fourth quarter, and announced that it has surpassed 44 million members. That's up from 40 million announced on the previous quarter's report. The company says it expects to surpass 48 million members by the end of Q1.

Here's an overview of the financials.

The company saw domestic net additions for the quarter rise 14% year over year at 2.05 million. Netflix attributes this growth to "service improvements, marketing effectiveness, and sales of Internet connected devices," and expects the momentum to continue in Q1.

"Our domestic growth is very strong, much of which should be attributed to the tailwind of Internet video growth in general. Hulu had 3 CEOs in 2013, and yet grew paid subscribers an impressive 65%. We think YouTube, Amazon Instant Video, iTunes video and BBC iPlayer are also growing fast. In the traditional MVPD sector, there is lots of activity that may affect us on the margin. Verizon is buying the Intel Internet MVPD system and recently bought a CDN (EdgeCast) and streaming software 3 firm (UpLynk). These are big investments, so they clearly have big plans. Sony announced they are launching an Internet MVPD system this year. Finally, depending on the decision of the Supreme Court, Aereo will either have to pay for the broadcast content like MVPDs, or the MVPDs will no longer be obliged to pay. Within the MVPD ecosystem, there are potentially big shake ups. In contrast, we continue licensing and producing more exclusive content for our direct-to consumer business, and are relatively unaffected by the big bundle questions."

The two also talked up the company's international progress, which saw 1.74 million net additions in Q4. As anticipated, the number was slightly down from the previous year's quarter when it had just launched in the Nordics.

The two briefly discussed DVD membership, which is at 6.9 million members, contributing a "roughly stable" profit at $110 million. The company expects this to be more like $98 million in Q1.